Regulations

Rules Clarified Against Dissemination of Porn Information

The Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate issued jointly a circular titled Interpretation of Several Issues on Application of Laws in Handling Criminal Cases for Production, Duplication, Publishing, Selling and Dissemination of Electronic Porn Information via Internet, Mobile Communication Terminals and InformationServiceCenters, which takes effect on February 4, 2010. This document further clarifies the provisions applicable to relevant criminal cases. There are 13 articles in this document. Sources said that the purpose of issuing this paper is to further crack down upon the criminal acts of spreading porn information via Internet and handsets, and solve the difficulty in applying laws in this area. Chinese Text

Trade & Investment

Patent Applications Continue to Rise in 2009

The State Council Information Office held a press conference on modifications of the implementation rules of the Patent Law on February 3. Yin Xintian, Spokesman and Director-general of the Treaty and Law Department of SIPO gave a briefing. According to latest statistics, China has accepted a total of 976,686 cases of patent applications in 2009, up 17.9% over 2008. By category of patents, the invention patent applications number 314,573, accounting for 32.2% of total, a year-on-year growth of 8.5%, the utility model patent applications number 310,771, accounting for 31.8%, a growth of 37.8%, and the design patent applications number 351,342, accounting for 36%, a growth of 12.3%. In 2009, China granted a total of 581,992 patents, up 41.2% compared with 2008. Chinese Text

SIPO: Google Event Has Nothing to Do with Patent Regime

Yin Xintian, SIPO Spokesman and Director-General of the Treaty and Law Department, said at a press conference that this event itself has nothing to do with the patent regime in a direct way, but the intellectual property must be respected when spreading information and others’ works on Internet. He stressed that if Chinese intellectual property is violated when spreading information via network and news media, especially copyright, China’s laws shall apply so as to stop the behavior of infringement, which is Chinese government’s consistent standpoint. On February 1, the SIPO issued the Decision of the State Council on Revising the Implementation Rules of the Patent Law of the People’s Republic of China, which provided the time limit for the confidentiality censorship of foreign patent applications. Chinese Text

3G Mobile Communications

China Telecom to Launch Broadband Upgrading Program

Sources said that China Telecom plans to complete the optical fiber cable deployment project for upgrading of broadband across China in the next three to five years to enable 20M broadband access capability for urban subscribers. It is expected that when the program is completed, household subscribers can enjoy the broadband with a downlink rate of 8M-20M, and the optical fiber cable will extend to each household in developed urban areas. Currently, the widely seen ADSL broadband data rate is 1M-2M across China, no more than 8M, and the optical fiber cable is exclusively used by enterprise subscribers. Chinese Text

Largest 3G Handset Production Base Starts Operation

Yulong Coolpad announced on February 2 that its production facility located in Dongguan, Guangdong starts operation. The production base covers an area of 500mu, and the ultimate production capacity is expected to reach 40m units. This is China’s largest 3G handset production base currently. Yulong Coolpad is the wholly owned subsidiary of China Wireless. Its new facility named Songshanhu Production Base is intended primarily to manufacture handsets including EVDO, TD-SCDMA and WCDMA, and the production capacity will reach 40m units in the next three years. Statistics show that the 3G hendset sales exceeded 5m units in 2009, and its monthly sales grow at a rate of more than 50%. Chinese Text

Software

China's Software industry Income Grows 25.6% in 2009

MIIT’s statistics released on February 3 show that in 2009, the software business income of China’s software industry hit RMB 951.3b, up 25.6% over 2008, 4.2% percent less than last year’s growth. The income from software product sales was RMB 328.8b, up 26.3% over 2008, and the income from software technical services was RMB212.63b, a growth of 31.4%. It is notable that the system integration income in 2009, totaling RMB 220.29b, grows 23.7%, but far less than the growth of last year, and the income from embedded software and IC design witnessed a slower growth than the average income growth of the entire industry. In addition, the growth of China’s software export and outsourcing service is slowing down remarkably. The whole year’s software exports hit USD18.5b, a year-on-year growth of 14%. Chinese Text

Software, IC Given Priority in West China

Sources close to the State Administration of Taxation said that as the preferential policies enacted for China’s Western Development Program will expire by the end of this year, the State Administration of Taxation is considering follow-up policies, and the initial proposal is that proper adjustment be made to the existing policies on tax incentives, and priority support be given to such industries as software, IC and packaging in western region. It is worth noting that the finance and taxation authorities are considering implement more preferential policies for the software industry and IC industry in western regions. Chinese Text

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